


moment of truth

by justalittlegreen



Series: Sunshine and Filth [7]
Category: MASH (1970), MASH (TV)
Genre: Angst, Letters, M/M, Slash, hunnihawk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-01
Updated: 2018-11-01
Packaged: 2019-08-13 23:16:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16481627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justalittlegreen/pseuds/justalittlegreen
Summary: It all starts to come out.





	moment of truth

**Author's Note:**

> I think this is one of those stories where it makes things richer if you know how it's going to turn out, on some level. I want readers to have the next several stories with this in mind. Does that make sense?

Mill Valley, California, Spring 1954

 

When she suggests they send Erin away for the weekend to her parents’ house, BJ assumes Peggy thinks there will be an excessive amount of drinking. Which is entirely fair, given what she knows of The Swamp, and of Hawkeye – BJ must’ve written whole paragraphs about the miracle of that still and the swill that came out of it. He thinks Hawkeye will want to meet her, so Peg suggests picking her up at the end of the visit instead, and letting him get to know her before he leaves. BJ, still a little confused, agrees.

Peg sends him to mow the grass while she prepares the guest room and Erin naps. Hawkeye arrives in three days, and she still hasn’t figured out how to tell BJ about the letter. Hasn’t figured out how to explain what she knows, what battles she’s been fighting in her head and heart for the last year and a half, how the peaceful, loving wife he came home to was a hard-won fight.

She folds the sheets of the twin bed with perfect hospital corners, and then goes into the room’s seldom-used closet. She keeps their suitcases in there, BJ’s army duffel, his uniforms. She’s hidden the letter from Hawkeye in a suitcase that they haven’t used in years. She pulls it out and reads it one more time, sitting on the bed she’s made, then makes up her mind and calls BJ in from the yard.

He comes in, sweating from the afternoon sun, his skin back to the healthy glow it had before the war. He welcomes her offer of a glass of ice water and sits at the kitchen table. It takes him a minute to look at the letter, but she knows he recognizes the handwriting as soon as he sees it. He freezes. Seeing Peggy’s name in Hawkeye’s handwriting on the envelope is almost as strange as hearing her name in his mouth.

He feels a hand on his shoulder before he can say anything, and Peggy is sliding into the chair next to him, putting a hand over his and looking him dead on.

 _It came when you were about six months in_ , she says quietly. _There were so many secrets. But not that many lies._

BJ doesn’t know what he’s hearing. He doesn’t realize he’s shaking until Peg puts a hand to his cheek and pulls him into her shoulder and shushes him like she does Erin. He has no idea what’s in that letter, and a million ideas of what it could be and what they mean.

 _BJ, it’s all right. It’s all right. I love you,_ she’s saying as he tries to steady his breathing and his hands. What could she possibly mean? If that letter says what he thinks – what it could – what could possibly be okay right now?

 _You’d better read it now, before your imagination makes it even worse,_ she says gently. _Just remember: I love you. And it’s all right._

BJ looks at her with a fear she’s never seen before and it makes her heart ache with tenderness. He’s so terrified, and frankly, had he come home a year sooner, he might have had cause to be. But Peg slips the letter from its envelope and places it into his hands, and puts what she hopes is a reassuring hand on his back. He unfolds it, hands still shaking. Peg has read it so many times she doesn’t need to read it over his shoulder.

_My name is Benjamin Franklin Pierce. You might know me as Hawkeye, from BJ’s letters. Our home here is a stinking pile of filth with all the luck of a single shiny penny. Your husband, of course, is the only one with any cents._

_I’ve been in Korea for a year and a half, sewing up the wounded and sending them back for more, and failing to save more lives than I will ever be able to live with. I was a lighthearted man with a dark streak when I came here. Now, I am a dark man who basks in whatever glimmer of humanity can be resuscitated from this ugly stinking corpse of a ~~war~~ police action. Mostly in the form of mouth-to-mouth._

_I assume he’s told you about the pranks. Maybe he’s told you about the women – just mine, never his. I promise you that. I assume he’s told you about the marathons of surgery, about the ways the two of us can practically waltz through a patient, so familiar and attuned are we to each other’s moves and thoughts. I have never met a surgeon like him._

_The truth is, Mrs. Hunnicutt, I’ve never met another person like him._

_I want you to know that BJ’s love for you and Erin is what keeps him alive and shining. That I can tell when he’s thinking of you, because there’s a smile that only appears when he’s writing to you or thinking about you. When he wears that look, he escapes this place for just a second, and I envy that as much as I am grateful that he can._

_But I’m doing a partnerless waltz around the thing I’m trying to say, which is to say, I have now spent five paragraphs (and countless other burned letters) trying not to hurt you. But if you are anything like BJ – if you are the woman to whom he is so completely, madly, and utterly devoted – then there is half a chance you’ll understand._

_Peggy, I love him. And he loves me. And that fact is driving him out of his mind with fear. I have never meant or wanted to take him from you. To take him from the people who make him whole. To pull him away from the sunshine. And if there is one thing I beg you to believe it’s this: he has not left you, in mind, heart, or soul. Nor in body, I believe, as you’ll find out when your good man arrives home._

_If you leave him over this, I’ll never forgive myself. If you wish me a slow and painful death on the spot, I’ll understand. You and I will likely never meet, but I wanted a chance that you would forgive him now. Because he loves so – openly. So unashamedly. Because he has not left you. ~~Because he will never be mine, even if I’m his.~~ Because he’s still coming home to you. _

_I am at your mercy, Peggy Hunnicutt. If there is some small place in your heart that can understand how I fell in love with the man who calls you home, it would be the greatest act of grace anyone has ever bestowed upon me._

_With gratitude,_

_Hawkeye_


End file.
